Chorus
singing
Demos, you are our all-powerful sovereign lord; all tremble before you,
[1115]
yet you are led by the nose. You love to be flattered and fooled; you listen to the orators with gaping mouth and your mind
[1120]
is led astray.
Demos
singing
It's rather you who have no brains, if you think me so foolish as all that; it is with a purpose that I play this idiot's role,
[1125]
for I love to drink the livelong day, and so it pleases me to keep a thief for my minister. When he has thoroughly gorged himself,
[1130]
then I overthrow and crush him.
Chorus
singing
What profound wisdom! If it be really so, why! all is for the best.
[1135]
Your ministers, then, are your victims, whom you nourish and feed up expressly in the Pnyx, so that, the day your dinner is ready,
[1140]
you may immolate the fattest and eat him.
Demos
singing
Look, see how I play with them, while all the time they think themselves such adepts at cheating me.
[1145]
I have my eye on them when they thieve, but I do not appear to be seeing them; then
[1150]
I thrust a judgment down their throat as it were a feather, and force them to vomit up all they have robbed from me.