Pisthetaerus: You cursed brute! why, I am almost dead with terror!
Euelpides: Oh! my god! ’twas sheer fear that made me lose my jay.
Pisthetaerus: Ah! you great coward! were you so frightened that you let go your jay?
Euelpides: And did you not lose your crow, when you fell sprawling on the ground? Pray tell me that.
Pisthetaerus: No, no.
Euelpides: Where is it, then?
Pisthetaerus: It has flown away.
Euelpides: Then you did not let it go? Oh! you brave fellow!
Epops: Open the forest, that I may go out!
Euelpides: By Heracles! what a creature! what plumage! What means this triple crest?
Epops: Who wants me?
Euelpides: The twelve great gods have used you ill, meseems.
Epops: Are you chaffing me about my feathers? I have been a man, strangers.
Euelpides: ’Tis not you we are jeering at.
Epops: At what, then?
Euelpides: Why, ’tis your beak that looks so odd to us.
Epops: This is how Sophocles outrages me in his tragedies. Know, I once was Tereus.
Euelpides: You were Tereus, and what are you now? a bird or a peacock?
Epops: I am a bird.
Euelpides: Then where are your feathers? For I don’t see them.
Epops: They have fallen off.
Euelpides: Through illness?
Epops: No. All birds moult their feathers, you know, every winter, and others grow in their place. But tell me, who are you?
Euelpides: We? We are mortals.
Epops: From what country?