TRYGAEUS
And what is he going to do with his mortar?

HERMES
He wants to pound up all the cities of Greece in it.... But I must say
good-bye, for I think he is coming out; what an uproar he is making!

TRYGAEUS
Ah! great gods! let us seek safety; meseems I already hear the
noise of this fearful war mortar.

WAR (ENTERS, CARRYING A HUGE MORTAR)
Oh! mortals, mortals, wretched mortals, how your jaws will snap!

TRYGAEUS
Oh! divine Apollo! what a prodigious big mortar! Oh, what misery
the very sight of War causes me! This then is the foe from whom I fly,
who is so cruel, so formidable, so stalwart, so solid on his legs!

WAR
Oh! Prasiae![1] thrice wretched, five times, aye, a thousand times
wretched! for thou shalt be destroyed this day.

f[1] An important town in Eastern Laconia on the Argolic gulf, celebrated
for a temple where a festival was held annually in honour of Achilles.
It had been taken and pillaged by the Athenians in the second year of
the Peloponnesian War, 430 B.C. As he utters this imprecation, War
throws some leeks, the root-word of the name Praisae, into his mortar.