CHORUS
We kings! Over whom?

PISTHETAERUS
...of all that exists, firstly of me and of this man, even of Zeus
himself. Your race is older than Saturn, the Titans and the Earth.

CHORUS
What, older than the Earth!

PISTHETAERUS
By Phoebus, yes.

CHORUS
By Zeus, but I never knew that before!

PISTHETAERUS
'Tis because you are ignorant and heedless, and have never read
your Aesop. 'Tis he who tells us that the lark was born
before all other creatures, indeed before the Earth; his father died
of sickness, but the Earth did not exist then; he remained unburied
for five days, when the bird in its dilemma decided, for want of
a better place, to entomb its father in its own head.

EUELPIDES
So that the lark's father is buried at Cephalae.[1]

f[1] A deme of Attica. In Greek the word also means 'heads,'
and hence the pun.