CHORUS OF WOMEN. Tell us, tell us, what is it?
LYSISTRATA. I only tell the simple truth.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. What has happened so disconcerting; come, tell your friends.
LYSISTRATA. Oh! the thing is so hard to tell--yet so impossible to conceal.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Nay, never seek to hide any ill that has befallen our cause.
LYSISTRATA. To blurt it out in a word--we are in heat!
LYSISTRATA. What use calling upon Zeus? The thing is even as I say. I cannot stop them any longer from lusting after the men. They are all for deserting. The first I caught was slipping out by the postern gate near the cave of Pan; another was letting herself down by a rope and pulley; a third was busy preparing her escape; while a fourth, perched on a bird's back, was just taking wing for Orsilochus' house,[444] when I seized her by the hair. One and all, they are inventing excuses to be off home. Look! there goes one, trying to get out! Halloa there! whither away so fast?
FIRST WOMAN. I want to go home; I have some Miletus wool in the house, which is getting all eaten up by the worms.
LYSISTRATA. Bah! you and your worms! go back, I say!
FIRST WOMAN. I will return immediately, I swear I will by the two goddesses! I only have just to spread it out on the bed.
LYSISTRATA. You shall not do anything of the kind! I say, you shall not go.
FIRST WOMAN. Must I leave my wool to spoil then?
SECOND WOMAN. Unhappy woman that I am! Alas for my flax! I've left it at home unstript!
LYSISTRATA. So, here's another trying to escape to go home and strip her flax forsooth!
SECOND WOMAN. Oh! I swear by the goddess of light, the instant I have put it in condition I will come straight back.
LYSISTRATA. You shall do nothing of the kind! If once you began, others would want to follow suit.
THIRD WOMAN. Oh! goddess divine, Ilithyia, patroness of women in labour, stay, stay the birth, till I have reached a spot less hallowed than Athene's Mount!
LYSISTRATA. What mean you by these silly tales?
THIRD WOMAN. I am going to have a child--now, this minute.
LYSISTRATA. But you were not pregnant yesterday!
THIRD WOMAN. Well, I am to-day. Oh! let me go in search of the midwife, Lysistrata, quick, quick!
LYSISTRATA. What is this fable you are telling me? Ah! what have you got there so hard?