Part 7 (1/2)

MEGARIAN Are you not holding back the salt?

DICAEOPOLIS 'Tis garlic then?

MEGARIAN What! garlic! do you not at every raid grub up the ground with your pikes to pull out every single head?

DICAEOPOLIS What DO you bring then?

MEGARIAN Little sows, like those they immolate at the Mysteries.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! very well, show me them.

MEGARIAN They are very fine; feel their weight. See! how fat and fine.

DICAEOPOLIS But what is this?

MEGARIAN A SOW, for a certainty.(1)

f(1) Throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon (a) word which means in Greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs of generation.'

DICAEOPOLIS You say a sow! Of what country, then?

MEGARIAN From Megara. What! is it not a sow then?

DICAEOPOLIS No, I don't believe it is.

MEGARIAN This is too much! what an incredulous man! He says 'tis not a sow; but we will stake, an you will, a measure of salt ground up with thyme, that in good Greek this is called a sow and nothing else.

DICAEOPOLIS But a sow of the human kind.

MEGARIAN Without question, by Diocles! of my own breed! Well! What think you? will you hear them squeal?

DICAEOPOLIS Well, yes, I' faith, I will.

MEGARIAN Cry quickly, wee sowlet; squeak up, hussy, or by Hermes! I take you back to the house.

GIRL Wee-wee, wee-wee!

MEGARIAN Is that a little sow, or not?

DICAEOPOLIS Yes, it seems so; but let it grow up, and it will be a fine fat b.i.t.c.h.

MEGARIAN In five years it will be just like its mother.

DICAEOPOLIS But it cannot be sacrificed.

MEGARIAN And why not?

DICAEOPOLIS It has no tail.(1)

f(1) Sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an animal, therefore, without a tail could not be offered.