Pisthetaerus: Welcome, Cinesias, you lime-wood man! Why have you come here a-twisting your game leg in circles?
Cinesias: “I want to become a bird, a tuneful nightingale.”
Pisthetaerus: Enough of that sort of ditty. Tell me what you want.
Cinesias: Give me wings and I will fly into the topmost airs to gather fresh songs in the clouds, in the midst of the vapours and the fleecy snow.
Pisthetaerus: Gather songs in the clouds?
Cinesias: ’Tis on them the whole of our latter-day art depends. The most brilliant dithyrambs are those that flap their wings in void space and are clothed in mist and dense obscurity. To appreciate this, just listen.
Pisthetaerus: Oh! no, no, no!
Cinesias: By Hermes! but indeed you shall. “I shall travel through thine ethereal empire like a winged bird, who cleaveth space with his long neck …”
Pisthetaerus: Stop! easy all, I say!
Cinesias: “… as I soar over the seas, carried by the breath of the winds …”
Pisthetaerus: By Zeus! but I’ll cut your breath short.
Cinesias: “… now rushing along the tracks of Notus, now nearing Boreas across the infinite wastes of the ether.” Pisthetaerus beats him. Ah! old man, that’s a pretty and clever idea truly!
Pisthetaerus: What! are you not delighted to be cleaving the air?
Cinesias: To treat a dithyrambic poet, for whom the tribes dispute with each other, in this style!
Pisthetaerus: Will you stay with us and form a chorus of winged birds as slender as Leotrophides for the Cecropid tribe?
Cinesias: You are making game of me, ’tis clear; but know that I shall never leave you in peace if I do not have wings wherewith to traverse the air.
An informer: What are these birds with downy feathers, who look so pitiable to me? Tell me, oh swallow with the long dappled wings.
Pisthetaerus: Oh! but ’tis a regular invasion that threatens us. Here comes another of them, humming along.
Informer: Swallow with the long dappled wings, once more I summon you.
Pisthetaerus: It’s his cloak I believe he’s addressing; “faith, it stands in great need of the swallows” return.
Informer: Where is he who gives out wings to all comers?
Pisthetaerus: ’Tis I, but you must tell me for what purpose you want them.
Informer: Ask no questions. I want wings, and wings I must have.
Pisthetaerus: Do you want to fly straight to Pellene?
Informer: I? Why, I am an accuser of the islands, an informer …