The Cock (1-2)

Mikyllos

May Zeus strike you dead, you confounded cock, for the envy in your heart and the clarion in your throat! Why did you lift up your voice and wake me when I was a rich man in a glorious dream and revelling in marvellous happiness? Can't you let me escape by night either from poverty, which I hate even worse than you? To judge from the great quiet that still prevails it is not yet midnight. It can't be, for I am not stiff yet with the early frost as usual—that is my trusty clock to tell me of the approach of day. But this sleepless beast has begun to crow already, just at the end of the evening, as if he were guarding the golden fleece in the story. Not for your own good, though! I shall certainly have my revenge when daylight comes, and smash you with my club. You would give me too much trouble just now, hopping about in the dark.

Cock

Master Mikyllos, I thought I was going to do you a kindness by being as beforehand with the night as I could, so that you might get up and finish most of your work. Certainly if you

make one shoe before sunrise you will be so much ahead, having accomplished this towards your daily bread. However, if you prefer to sleep, I will hold my tongue at your pleasure and be as dumb as a fish; but do you look out lest by dreaming of riches you starve when you are awake.

Mikyllos

O Zeus, god of prodigies, and Herakles, that keepest mischief from us, what is this fearful thing? The cock spoke like a human being!

Cock

Does a thing of this sort strike you, then, as a prodigy—that I should speak the same tongue as you?

Mikyllos

I should think it is a prodigy. But do ye, O gods, avert misfortune from us!

Cock

You seem to me, Mikyllos, to be actually illiterate. Have you not read Homer's poems, in which Achilles's horse, too, Xanthos, bade a long farewell to neighing, and stood in the midst of the battle and conversed, reciting whole verses, not prose as I do now? And he prophesied, too, and foretold coming events, and was not considered to be doing anything out of the way; nor did he who heard him call upon the Protector against evil as you did, thinking the sound an omen to be averted. Moreover, what would you have done if the keel of the Argo had spoken to you, or if the oak of Dodona had prophesied for you

with its own voice, or if you had seen skins creeping and heard the flesh of oxen lowing half-roasted on the spits? I am the coadjutor of Hermes, who is the most loquacious and eloquent of all the gods, and for the rest I was not likely to find much trouble in mastering the human language, seeing that I live with you and share your table. But if you should promise me to keep the secret I would not mind telling you the truer reason of our having the same language, and how I came to speak thus.