Soc. See! there they come in very great numbers^[1] through the hollows and thickets; there, obliquely.

Strep. What's the matter? for I can't see them.

Soc. By the entrance. [Enter Chorus.]

Strep. Now at length with difficulty I just see them.

Soc. Now at length you assuredly see them, unless you have your eyes running pumpkins.^[2]

Strep. Yes, by Jupiter! O highly honoured Clouds, for now they cover all things.

Soc. Did you not, however, know, nor yet consider, these to be goddesses?

Strep. No, by Jupiter! but I thought them to be mist, and dew, and smoke.

Soc. For you do not know, by Jupiter, that these feed very many sophists, Thurian soothsayers, practisers of medicine, lazy-longhaired-onyx-ring-wearers,^[3] and song-twisters for the cyclic dances, and meteorological quacks. They feed idle people who do nothing, because such men celebrate them in verse.

Strep. For this reason, then, they introduced^[4] into their verses "the dreadful impetuosity of the moist whirling-bright clouds;"^[5] and "the curls of hundred-headed Typho;" and "the hard-blowing tempests;" and then, "aërial, moist;" "crooked-clawed birds, floating in air;" and "the showers of rain from dewy Clouds." And then, in return for these, they swallow "slices of great, fine mullets,^[6] and bird's-flesh of thrushes."