A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

230 Sicilian Expedition to End of War
Could leave this earthly level,
For a wild aerial revel:
O'er the waste of ocean,
To wander and to dally
With the billow's motion;
Or in an eager sally.
Soaring to the sky,
To range and rove on high
With my plumy sails,
Buffeted and baffled, with the gusty gales.
The advantage
of having
wings.
Here the
chorus questions
the
audience at
the play.
The poet
gibes at the
foreign-born
among the
citizens.
Is there any person present sitting a spectator here,
Who desires to pass his time freely without restraint or fear?
Should he wish to colonize, he never need be checked or chid,
For the trifling indiscretions, which the testy laws forbid.
Parricides are in esteem; among the birds we deem it
fair,
A combat honorably fought betwixt a game-cock and his heir!
There the branded runagate, branded and mottled in the face,
Will be deemed a motley bird; a motley mark is no disgrace.
Spintharus, the Phrygian born, will pass a muster there with
ease,
Counted as a Phrygian fowl; and even Execestides,
Once a Carian and a slave, may there be nobly born and free;
Plume himself on his descent and hatch a proper pedigree.
Thus the swans in chorus follow.
On the mighty Thracian stream,
Hymning their eternal theme.
Praise to Bacchus and Apollo:
The welkin rings, with sounding wings,
With songs and cries and melodies;
Up to the thunderous ^ther ascending:
Whilst all that breathe, on earth beneath,
The beasts of the wood, the plain and the flood,
In panic amazement are crouching and bending;
With the awful qualm, of a sudden calm.
Ocean and air in silence blending.