Heracles: What are these meats?
Pisthetaerus: These are birds that have been punished with death for attacking the people’s friends.
Heracles: And you are seasoning them before answering us?
Pisthetaerus: Ah! Heracles! welcome, welcome! What’s the matter?
Heracles: The gods have sent us here as ambassadors to treat for peace.
A servant: There’s no more oil in the flask.
Pisthetaerus: And yet the birds must be thoroughly basted with it.
Heracles: We have no interest to serve in fighting you; as for you, be friends and we promise that you shall always have rainwater in your pools and the warmest of warm weather. So far as these points go we are armed with plenary authority.
Pisthetaerus: We have never been the aggressors, and even now we are as well disposed for peace as yourselves, provided you agree to one equitable condition, namely, that Zeus yield his sceptre to the birds. If only this is agreed to, I invite the ambassadors to dinner.
Heracles: That’s good enough for me. I vote for peace.
Posidon: You wretch! you are nothing but a fool and a glutton. Do you want to dethrone your own father?
Pisthetaerus: What an error! Why, the gods will be much more powerful if the birds govern the earth. At present the mortals are hidden beneath the clouds, escape your observation, and commit perjury in your name; but if you had the birds for your allies, and a man, after having sworn by the crow and Zeus, should fail to keep his oath, the crow would dive down upon him unawares and pluck out his eye.
Posidon: Well thought of, by Posidon!
Heracles: My notion too.
Pisthetaerus: To the Triballian. And you, what’s your opinion?
Triballus: Nabaisatreu.
Pisthetaerus: D’you see? he also approves. But hear another thing in which we can serve you. If a man vows to offer a sacrifice to some god, and then procrastinates, pretending that the gods can wait, and thus does not keep his word, we shall punish his stinginess.
Posidon: Ah! ah! and how?
Pisthetaerus: While he is counting his money or is in the bath, a kite will relieve him, before he knows it, either in coin or in clothes, of the value of a couple of sheep, and carry it to the god.
Heracles: I vote for restoring them the sceptre.
Posidon: Ask the Triballian.
Heracles: Hi Triballian, do you want a thrashing?
Triballus: Saunaka baktarikrousa.
Heracles: He says, “Right willingly.”
Posidon: If that be the opinion of both of you, why, I consent too.