And yet it is idle, no doubt, and superfluous to deal
frankly with you by way of education; for in the first
place you yourself could never improve in response
to my censure, any more than a tumble-bug could be
persuaded not to roll those balls of his any longer,
when once he has become used to them. On the habits of the tumble-bug, or dung-beetle, soe the beginning of the Peace of Aristophanes. In the
second place, I do not believe that anyone exists who
still is ignorant of your brazen performances and of
the sins that you, an old man, have committed
against yourself. You are not to that extent secure
or unobserved in your iniquity. There is no need of
anyone to strip away your lion’s skin that you may
be revealed a donkey, unless perhaps someone has
just come to us from the Hyperboreans, or is sufficiently Cymaean Cf. Runaways, 13. not to know, as soon as he sees you,
that you are the most unbridled of all asses, without
waiting to hear you bray. Your doings have been
noised abroad so long a time, so far ahead of me,
so universally and so repeatedly; and you have no
slight reputation for them, surpassing Ariphrades,
surpassing the Sybarite Hemitheon, surpassing the
notorious Chian, Bastas, that adept in similar
matters. Ariphrades was an Athenian whom Aristophanes pilloried for perverted relations with women, The Sybarite Hemitheon (or Minthon; see the critical note) is alluded to as the author of an obscene book in the Ignorant Book-Collector, 23 (III, 203) and perhaps also in Ovid (Trist., II, 417: qui composuit nuper Sybaritica), but the name is not given there. Bastas was a nickname applied to Democritus of Chios, a musician, by Eupolis in the Baptae (Fr. 81 Kock). 
Nevertheless, I must speak of them, even if I shall







 

seem to be telling stale news, in order that I may
not bear the blame of being the only one who does
not know about them. But no!
 
We must callin one
of Menander’s Prologues, Exposure, a god devoted
to Truth and Frankness, by no means the least notable
of the characters that appear on the stage, disliked
only by you and your sort, who fear his tongue because
he knows everything and tells in plain language all
that he knows about you. We do not know the play in which Exposure appeared as prologue and have no other information in the matter. It would indeed be
delightful if he should prove willing to oblige us by
coming forward and telling the spectators the entire
argument of the play. 
Come then, Exposure, best of prologues and divinities, take care to inform the audience plainly that we
have not resorted to this public utterance gratuitously, or in a quarrelsome spirit, or, as the proverb has
it, with unwashen feet, Zenobius, I, 95: “going up to the roof with unwashed feet”; unexplained by the paroemiographers or Suidas. It must have to do with the use of the roof as a sleeping-place, but to vindicate a grievance
of our own as well as those of the public, hating the
man for his depravity. Say only this, and present a
clear exposition, and then, giving us your blessing,
take yourself off, and leave the rest to us, for we shall
copy you and expose the greater part of his career so
thoroughly that in point of truth and frankness you
can find no fault with us. But do not sing my praises
to them, Exposure dear, and do not prematurely
pour out the bald truth about these traits of his; for
it is not fitting, as you are a god, that the words which
describe matters so abominable should come upon
your lips.